JDCMB

Monday, March 19, 2018

A year ago I went to Hamburg to meet and hear the brilliant young Chinese-American pianist George Li. Tomorrow he's giving his first recital in the International Piano Series of the Southbank Centre - still at St John's Smith Square (the Queen Elizabeth Hall reopens in April) - and I'll be doing a pre-concert talk with him beforehand. Do come along if you can!

Here is the article I wrote about him after the Hamburg interview, reproduced here by kind permission of PIANIST Magazine (and edited slightly now for updating).

George Li: plenty to smile about.
Photo: Simon Fowler

One of the great misconceptions about music
competitions is that a performer only benefits by winning first prize. But many
of these events offer young players, whether or not they emerge triumphant, an
exceptional platform to be heard by an audience that, with the advent of
Internet live streaming, can nowadays run to millions. Moreover, those who win
other prizes or simply catch the right person’s attention can find themselves
fortunate enough to have a vital launching pad.

George Li won silver medal at the
International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2015, when he was all of 19. The
youthful Chinese American pianist from Boston quickly captured the imagination
of a representative from the artists’ management firm Intermusica; a contract
followed. Now he has another contract, this time with Warner Classics, which
has signed him up for two recital discs and two with orchestra.

I caught up with the unassuming and highly
intelligent young musician in Hamburg, where he was making his debut at the
shiny new Elbphilharmonie with the Hamburg Philharmonic, playing Rachmaninoff’s
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for the first time. On stage his diminutive
figure gives the illusion that he could still be a schoolboy – but when he
starts to play, it’s another matter altogether. His musicianship is informed by
a fulsome emotional world, sensitivity to drama, directness of expression and distinctive
beauty of tone that together conspire to give him a strong personal voice at
the instrument.

His passion for communicative music-making,
he says, struck him in earnest when he first performed a Beethoven concerto
with orchestra in his early teens. “All of a sudden I felt like I had entered a
different world,” he says. “It was a unique and amazing experience: for the
first time I was feeling music a lot more emotionally, rather than just
remembering the right notes and where to come in. Afterwards people were coming
up to me and saying that listening to me had changed their lives. I was
shocked. I didn’t know before that music had that kind of power. After that, I
just wanted to be able to find that feeling again.”

George, aged 11, plays Liszt...[this is SO CUTE - he can only just reach the pedals, but plays like a total pro...]

Born in Boston to parents who had each
immigrated to the US from China, Li is the second of three musical children.
His younger brother, Andrew, is also a gifted pianist, he reports; and their
elder sister started piano lessons first, which spurred on the small George to
try it too. “Neither of our parents is a musician,” he says. “They grew up
during the Cultural Revolution and never had those opportunities.” His father
is a scientist, his mother an accountant, but there was always music around: Li’s
early musical memories include being taken to hear the Boston Symphony
Orchestra and the city’s series of celebrity recitals, “pianists like Evgeny Kissin
and Murray Perahia, who really inspired me a lot. And I remember that right
before I went to bed Mom used to turn on the classical radio station. All those
elements nudged me in that direction.”

He soon became a seasoned competition participant,
having taken part in local contests since the tender age of six. “It was
something a lot of Asian kids who play piano used to do,” he remarks. “Every
year they’d just try and see how they got on in competitions, as an incentive
to learn repertoire and push yourself a little further. I did that for three or
four years and then took it to another level.”

When he was 16, he was amazed to win an
award from the Gilmore Foundation, which in addition to its more famous surprise-prize
for established artists also selects young pianists to support. Li was its
youngest winner to date. “It’s a really prestigious award and I had no idea
because it’s anonymous – they don’t tell you anything until you get a phone
call,” he recalls. “I was in Europe at 2am when I got the call and I was in
shock – I was, like, ‘Wait, what did
I win?’ It was very helpful because it’s a big cash award and you can use it
for whatever you want, so it helped me save to get a new piano and set up a
website. I also played some concerts at the Gilmore Festival [in Kalamazoo,
Michigan], which is a really great place – people there are so warm and it’s a
great atmosphere.”

Photo: Simon Fowler

A similarly life-changing event was the
Young Concert Artists Competition, which he won in 2010; the organisation then
managed his early career for three years. “They really helped me to jump-start
the performance lifestyle, building confidence and some kind of experience with
how that synergy and chemistry with the audience works,” he says. This helped
him to lay the foundations of a burgeoning career. He entered competition after
competition and soon prize heaped upon prize: second at the Gina Bachauer prize
in 2010, the Tabor Foundation Piano Award at the Verbier Festival 2012, first
prize at the Grand Prix Animato Piano Competition in Paris in 2014 – and plenty
more. Therefore when he went to Russia for the Tchaikovsky Competition, he was effectively
an old-timer.

The Tchaikovsky Competition proved beyond
his wildest dreams – see the box-out – but since then he has scarcely had a
chance to look back. He is particularly thrilled about making his first CD for
Warner Classics. “It’s a huge thing, recording a CD and having it released,
when there are so many recordings around. I’m so lucky!” he remarks. Recorded
live in concert in the Mariinsky Concert Hall, St Petersburg, it should hit the
shelves this autumn. The programme offers a distinctly unusual mix of
repertoire, from Haydn through Chopin and Rachmaninoff to Liszt – but there is,
Li says, method to the apparent madness.

“It takes the listener on a journey,” he
suggests. “The Haydn is elegant, but also has a rather sorrowful element. That
leads into the Chopin B flat minor ‘Funeral March’ Sonata: a very tragic piece which
holds the entire spectrum of aching loss. That goes further with the
Rachmaninoff Corelli Variations, a piece that is very special to me: it
definitely explores that darker area and plunges you towards so much variety in
shading, darkness and colouring of that feeling, and of course the ending is
heartbreaking. It’s like a swansong. At the end you’re surrounded by despair,
like a feeling from Dostoyevsky. But then the Liszt Consolation No.3 and
Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 bring you back and lift you up from that depression. It
takes you on a journey from darkness to light, from death to resurrection –
that’s the motif I’ve envisaged.”

The reference to Dostoyevsky is no
coincidence. Li is currently combining his meteoric career with studies not
only musical but also academic, taking a joint course between Harvard
University and the New England Conservatory. “I’m studying English Literature
at Harvard, which is great,” he says. “It helps me make music because music and
literature are so intertwined with each other, being able to experience
different emotions and feelings through different mediums. Understanding how
writers express themselves through words is helpful to understanding how
composers express themselves through music.”

His special literary enthusiasms include
English Romantic poetry, especially Wordsworth; novels by Dostoyevsky and James
Joyce; and Shakespeare, which he says has proved a revelation. Not that the mix
of study and musical career is easy. “It’s been hard because I travel a lot,
and it’s hard to settle in, then leave and come back and have all this work to
do,” he acknowledges, “but it’s wonderful to be in class with so many people
who are brilliant in their own ways and to learn from them and the teachers.”

As for his mentors at the piano, he counts
among them Russell Sherman and his wife Wha Kyung Byun. “In general, I’ve been
so lucky to have the right teachers at the right times,” he says. “I studied
first with a Chinese piano teacher, Dorothy Shi, who really worked on my
technical foundation, building up a good, singing kind of sound, so that helped
with a sound foundation that I could build upon musically. Then I studied for
three years with the Chinese pianist Chengzong Yin, who won the silver medal of
the Tchaikovsky Competition the same year Ashkenazy and John Ogdon won joint first.
He really helped further the singing sound and deepened the musical side. Miss
Byun and Mr Sherman have helped to push me as a person and as a human being and
to refine my musicianship. I’m very grateful to them all and I’m still learning
from them today. It’s great to have a teacher who can nudge you in the right
direction if you’re straying too much towards impulsiveness and shift you back
to not going overboard with extremes.”

He admits he has learned some career lessons
the hard way. “The travel schedule was quite jarring at first, even until two
or three months ago,” he says. “I’ve done a lot of crazy things. In December [2016] I
went to China for 24 hours; I’d played a concert in St Petersburg a couple of days
before and then immediately flew to Miami for a concert, and the travelling was
just too much for me and I got sick and I still had to play two concerts after
that. That was a rough period.”

Unwinding, then? Rather unusually for a
musician, Li is a sports fanatic, especially where soccer is concerned. “I’m an
Arsenal fan,” he declares, “though unfortunately they haven’t been doing so
well recently!” [this was in March 2017- ed]. He enjoys playing soccer himself, when time allows, the big advantage
being that the sport is limited to footwork: “I can’t play basketball or
baseball because of my hands,” Li says, “but with soccer it’s much more
feasible to spend an hour now and then kicking the ball around with friends.
Exercise is really important to keep fit and relieve stress,” he adds
earnestly.

Li has already been in Britain this season, playing
the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No.2 with the Philharmonia at the Royal
Festival Hall, and is making his recital debut in the Southbank
Centre’s International Piano Series at the Southbank Centre on 20 March 2018,
including some repertoire from his new CD. Meanwhile, he has been enjoying trips to the
Verbier Festival, Seattle, Sweden and plenty more performances around Europe. “There’s
a lot of great things coming up,” Li beams. That is putting it mildly.

Liszt's Gnomenreigen, live in concert at Verbier, summer 2017

GEORGE
LI ON…THE TCHAIKOVSKY INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION

“The Tchaikovsky Competition is a great
platform to show who you are and what you can bring towards music. And being in
that Russian culture for a month, you can see how much people there appreciate
music. For them it’s like the musical Olympics: they really love hearing you
play and you can feel their appreciation. That takes away some of the pressure
and the stress: when you enter, you see in the first few rows the jury sitting
there being stern and strict – but behind them, people with shining eyes.

“It was a long month with a lot of pressure,
but also I had a great time. Of course the competition pressures were always
there, but it was a special month. For three weeks I was just living in my
hotel and the conservatory, practising. In the final, fortunately I played on
the first day, so I was exhausted, but had time before the verdict was
announced to go sightseeing, relax and play a little soccer.

“I hadn’t expected to advance so far, so I was
in shock to get second prize. We didn’t have any idea in advance of the results,
so the announcement was very tension-filled. The finals were such a marathon,
emotionally, spiritually and mentally, because it’s two back-to-back concerti with
only a few minutes in between, so after finishing I felt completely drained.
But then seeing people come up and say how powerful it was and how much it
affected them – going back to the power of music and how much it can affect the
emotions – that really stayed with me. It’s always been a dream to share how I
feel about music with as many people as possible. So being there in Moscow was
a sublime feeling.”

UP
CLOSE

If
you could play only one piece from now on, what would it be?

For a solo piece, either Beethoven’s Sonata
Op.111 or the Schubert B flat major Sonata D960. For a concerto, Rachmaninoff’s
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini – it’s so much fun!

If
you could play only the music of one composer from now on, who would it be?

Beethoven.

One
pianist you’d travel long and far to hear?

Vladimir Horowitz.

One
concert hall you’d like to play in?

The Elbphilharmonie or the Concertgebouw.

Any
technical troubles?

I have rather small hands, so Rachmaninoff
passagework can be difficult.

What
advice would you give to an amateur pianist about how to improve?

Experiment with the potential of what the
piano can do. It’s an orchestra in one instrument and based on that we can create
so many different kinds of sounds and different worlds. And work on singing
tone – it’s always the hardest thing, but something we’re constantly striving
for.

If
you weren’t a pianist, what would you be?

I would really love to work in English
literature. I love analysing things and going deep into the texts.

One
person you’d love to play for?

The Pope. I’m not religious, but I love the
spiritual vibe of cathedrals.

Friday, March 16, 2018

A century and still running? Several things have happened in the last few weeks that seem to add up to more than the sum of their random parts. These are they:

Debussy in 1908

1. The centenary of Debussy's death has sparked so many recordings, concerts, etc, that it looks as if he's more popular than I thought. Debussy is wonderful, amazing, original, seminal, groundbreaking, crucial, one of the all-time geniuses, etc, yet I've never thought of him as either a special audience draw, like Mozart, or a media-friendly dead-celebrity type, like Stravinsky (who pinched lavishly from him). But the CD releases have been hitting my desk at the rate of several a week, a nice big new book has already emerged, and it's still only the middle of March. What conclusion to draw? Debussy is super-duper-popularoony after all? Or: take a centenary, any centenary, jump aboard and expect to watch sales soar? Forgive me if I sound cynical, but this is 100 years, and 100 years is, nowadays, in living memory.

2. At the Institut Français discussion on Equality and Conductors last week, the French conductor Claire Gibault remarked that she thought the next big equality to tackle would be that of age. In a time in which everyone is hungry for the next bright young star to come along, older artists - well known or 'emerging' - can find themselves having a hard time, passed over despite having much to offer in terms of experience and wisdom. I have come across individuals (whether in person or sounding fed up on Twitter) attempting to pursue musical paths in later life, finding everything skewed against them. We forget sometimes that people develop at their own paces, and not always by choice: if you peak at 16 you may be forgotten by 56, or if your life gets in the way early on, your artistry may be waiting for a chance to shine through later. By the time you start to make the lemonade out of the lemons life has given you, other people may assume mistakenly that you are too old to know how much sugar to put in, adding insult to injury... We recommend they taste the lemonade before deciding.

3. Today there breaks news that the actress Olivia de Havilland, aged 101, is suing the makers of the TV series Feud, about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, for misrepresenting her. More here. De Havilland is the last surviving star of the 1930s golden age of Hollywood (and was, indeed, leading lady in a number of Korngold movies - apparently the composer rather took her under his wing when she appeared, very, very young, in Max Reinhardt's film of A Midsummer Night's Dream). She is quite right to speak up. Why should she not, just because she is 101? She is quoted as saying: "I feel strongly about it because when one person’s rights can be trampled on this way, the rights of others who are more vulnerable can be abused as well." What a heroine.

4. The pianist Marjan Kiepura has got in touch with news that it is now possible to listen to recordings by his mother, the legendary soprano Marta Eggerth (1912-2013), on Youtube, in a release of 43 numbers entitled My Life, My Song (it's also available on CD). These recordings were made as early as 1936 and as recently as 2002 when the Hungarian-born operetta star was 90. In some, Eggerth and her husband Jan Kiepura (Korngold's original tenor in Das Wunder der Heliane) sing together, in the mid 1950s. In others, Marjan accompanies his mother in beautifully paced Chopin songs. The voice changes, of course, but to hear Eggerth across some 70 years is to hear beyond the surface sound and delve into the underlying artistry that is conveyed by that sound through the decades. Here are some samples:

What is the linking factor in all these events? It's not just age - it's our attitude to it. Really we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, especially as we have these days an ageing population. Think about this a moment: our composers are producing music at three times Schubert's final age, or more. Elliott Carter was still composing at 100, Dutilleux into his nineties, Birtwistle and Gubaidulina are still going strong in their eighties. I'm not going to list the conductors or soloists, but you don't have to look far to find them. But isn't it strange that we celebrate the anniversaries later, rather than appreciating these individuals strongly enough when they're still with us?

Here's Mieczyslaw Horszowski in 1986, in his 90s, playing the Franck Prelude, Chorale and Fugue. I remember hearing him play it that year at Aldeburgh and have never forgotten how bowled over I was as it emerged almost as a mystical holy trinity, a three-in-one creation of utterly luminous intensity.

It's wonderful that Debussy's anniversary is big-time. It's great that we're celebrating Bernstein's centenary so lavishly this year. But Bernstein is dead. What about the venerable artists who are still alive? Shouldn't we celebrate them while they're here? And why wait until they're 100? How much fine musicianship, creativity, insight, empathy and excellence are we missing out on if we judge people by their birthdays?

Above all, Marta Eggerth's singing is proof, if it were needed, that though the body may age inevitably, the soul only ages if we let it, and we don't have to.Enjoy JDCMB? Support it here...

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Music student Zerlina Vulliamy was playing the trumpet in the WOW Women of the World Women's Orchestra on Sunday in the annual Mirth Control concert at the RFH, presented by Sandi Toksvig. She was so inspired by the occasion that she wanted to write about it. I couldn't be there myself this time, annoyingly, so I am very grateful to her for covering it for us. 'Mirth Control' is part of the Southbank Centre's year-round work to give a platform to female musicians, artists and more. JD

Sandi and the WOW Orchestra

Deeds Not Words

By Zerlina Vulliamy

I am a self-confessed hypocrite. I realised this on Sunday
11March, when playing the trumpet as part of the Women of the
World Orchestra in the ‘Mirth Control’ event at the Royal Festival Hall,
conducted by Alice Farnham. The orchestra was about to play a piece by the
British composer Elisabeth Lutyens, titled ‘Overture (En Voyage)’, but before
this, the presenter Sandi Toksvig informed the audience of the difficulty the
orchestra manager experienced trying to get the score and parts of this music.
After contacting many publishers, archives and libraries she finally managed to
track it down and distribute the parts to those of us in the orchestra.
However, this was on the harsh condition that they were to be used for one
performance only and had to be destroyed afterwards. Naturally, those of us on
stage and in the audience expressed concern at such a tragedy – first, that the
work of an excellent composer was so difficult to find, but also that it might
be never be performed again. Sandi herself strongly called on all of us to
support this cause of the forgotten women composers, a message that featured
prevalently throughout the evening.

Jude Kelly, the WOW Orchestra and some inspiration

Yet whilst I was sitting there, thinking about how limited
the representation of women in the arts still is, I suddenly realised that I
too was contributing, without realising, to this archaic canon which consists
entirely of male composers. I present a weekly show on music called Behind the
Classics at the University of Oxford’s student radio station, and I thought I
was helping the cause by dedicating an entire episode to raising awareness of
relatively unknown female musicians such as Mel Bonis and Melba Liston for
International Women’s Day. Yet I too have unknowingly contributed to the
tradition of playing music entirely by men in a few episodes.

This is
ridiculous when you think about it, seeing as women make up half the population
and there are millions of female musicians throughout history to the present,
all with music worth playing to an audience. And yet, because of the music I
have been exposed to throughout my life, whether it be classical, jazz, hip hop
or others, at the time it seemed normal not to feature a single woman in an
episode.

The RFH is decked for the occasion

Well, to quote the slogan appearing on red carpets recently:
time’s up. As Sandi Toksvig said herself at ‘Mirth Control’ - it seems absurd that
still, in 2018, women are so under-represented in the arts, as well as other
fields. She showed the audience many slides which projected shocking statistics,
such as the percentages of women composers and conductors who featured at the
2017 BBC Proms, which was 7.5% and 11% respectively. Tragically, women have often
been discouraged throughout history from picking up a pen and writing, or from
standing on a podium and conducting.

Perhaps the important work being done by
the WOW festival, which encourages women to strive for success in all fields
across the globe, will help rectify the situation. The WOW Orchestra consists
entirely of excellent women who are students, young professionals or amateurs;
we were also joined by the Voicelab choir, conducted by Jessie Maryon Davies
for this event. The music that featured was by a large host of female composers
such as Dame Ethel Smyth’s ‘Serenade in D’, Nina Simone’s ‘Mississippi Goddamn’
and ‘Revolution’ featuring Josette Bushell-Mingo’s stunning vocals and the song
‘What’s Up’ by 4 Non Blondes.

From my own perspective, it was truly an inspiring night,
with some hilariously memorable moments such as Sandi’s masterclass with Marin
Alsop, or the conducting relay where students of Alice Farnham’s ‘Women
Conductors with the Royal Philharmonic Society’ had the chance to conduct the
orchestra for a few bars each. The perfect balance was cast between humour and more
earnest moments, such as the profound words Jude Kelly, the founder of WOW and
Artistic Director of the Southbank, had to say about her own rather difficult past
of being a prominent woman in the arts. Yet more importantly, she proved
herself to be an inspiring figure when talking passionately about how
optimistic she was for the future.

Some more of the hand-stitched banners

This message must have been powerful to
those in the audience, looking at the huge number of women on stage (over 300)
against the backdrop of 50 hand-stitched banners, each inspired by historic
Suffragette posters. As a female brass player myself, one of the most
empowering moments of the night was playing the ‘Fanfare for the Uncommon
Woman’ by Joan Tower, with the brass section of the WOW Orchestra, conducted by
Alice Farnham. More often than not I have been the only woman in an all-male
brass section, hence why it was most refreshing to play in such a fantastic section
made up entirely of women. I hope it proved to those who were watching that
women fundamentally deserve equality in music, and perhaps inspired young girls
out there to pick up a brass instrument.

After a brilliant evening, there was certainly a positive
buzz in the foyer afterwards. Sandi Toksvig managed to leave us all in good
spirits, with a fundamental message of hope: that raising awareness is the next
step. To quote the slogan of the brave Suffragettes, who achieved a measure of
equality exactly 100 years ago with the Representation of the People Act (which
gave the vote to men over 21 and women over 30 who owned property), we need
‘Deeds Not Words’.

So to anyone reading this, I urge you to do something to try
and raise the profile of all the wonderful women composers out there, whether
it be attending concerts run by organisations who have pledged a 50/50 balance
or even by word of mouth – talking about women composers will not only put
their names in people’s minds but also will hopefully encourage publishers and
concert programmers to promote them to a place where equality exists. I myself
will do what I can but the more there are devoted to the cause, the better. To
quote Jude Kelly, if you can do anything to promote women musicians: “Pass It
On”!

ZV

Zerlina Vulliamy, 19, is a writer, broadcaster, trumpeter/singer and composer from London. She is currently in her first year studying Music at the University of Oxford where she produces and presents a weekly radio show on music called Behind the Classics on Oxide Radio: all episodes are available at www.oxideradio.live/behind-the-classics

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Our Youth Correspondent, Jack Pepper - who now presents his own show, Musical Minds, on Resonance FM - has a new article to get our grey matter working overtime on a Tuesday morning. Enjoy! JD

Cathedrals
of Sound

Yes, music is majestic. But there is danger in the
deification of the great composers. Putting writers on a pedestal serves only
to detract from the music and alienate potential audiences, argues Jack Pepper

Music has an immense potency, striking the very core of our
being. There is nothing like the thrill of music. But let’s not get ahead of
ourselves; we know that Bach’s structures are finely crafted, and that
Beethoven’s innovations dragged music through a new age. But proficiency,
innovation and craftmanship do not negate the fundamental factor that links all
of the great composers: their humanity.

Mendelssohn: Bach's prophet? Berlioz thought so...

Bruckner’s music has been described as forming “cathedrals
of sound”.Robert Browning argued that
“the grandeur of Beethoven’s thirty-second piano sonata represents the opening
of the gates of heaven.” Berlioz believed that “there is only one god – Bach –
and Mendelssohn is his prophet.” Whether these statements merely sought to
emphasise the importance of such composers in the history of music, or instead
arose out of a genuine conviction that these composers were linked with a
higher power, the common allusion to God raises an interesting question.

It is curious that we still apply such religious analogies
to past composers today, given the noticeable decline in religious belief in
comparison to the 19th century, in which these quotes occurred.

Although
these quotations come from a notably different context to our own, we tend to
perpetuate these viewpoints. The times have changed, and yet our inability to
express admiration for a composer without recourse to quasi-religious language
remains. It is (paradoxically) reductive for us to compare a composer with a
higher power; it is their humanity that makes them special, the fact that a
human could create such awe-inspiring works. When confronted with a
masterpiece, we seem unable to accept that its creator was a human being.

Let us explore the opposite instance for a moment. When
confronted with acts of evil, perhaps what shocks us most is that the
perpetrators were human beings. Hitler’s favourite Wagner opera was Lohengrin. Hitler, whether we like the
fact or not, was a human being; that is what makes his crimes so shocking. Yet,
like so many significant figures in history, he has become a symbol, an
academic discussion, a book title. It seems that the inevitable accumulation of
books, essays and broadcasts have transported historical figures into the realm
of the mythical.

Perhaps this is a natural consequence of history. When a
significant figure dies, studies, books, lectures and documentaries are
inevitable, and yet we run the risk of over-analysis; reading about a composer, talking about a piece of music, perhaps we
forget that – one day in the past – this was a real, breathing human being,
whether we like it or not.

I raise this question because the deification of composers –
the placing of great music and musicians on a pedestal – could be a significant
barrier to new listeners. As a young composer, I’m determined to share my love
of classical music to a wider audience, and yet – as someone who already loves
and actively explores the repertoire – it is all too easy to forget that
classical music is intimidating to a
new listener. With centuries of music - where even a single year contained so much musical variety, indeed
where even a single composer evolved
through many different styles - it is easy for classical musicians to forget
that the ‘canon’ can be a little daunting. By emphasising the other-worldly
qualities of a master composer, we overlook their humanity – forgetting that
they were just like us – and this may create a sense of detachment. This detachment
surely promotes the false assumption that classical music is ‘old’ music,
rather than a living and breathing art.

Stravinsky: People should be taught to love musicPhoto from Wikipedia

Presenting ‘Musical Minds’ on Resonance FM, I have been
eager to explore the anecdotal lives of great composers, emphasising the
humanity and reality that binds all musicians together. In the same way I may
struggle to be inspired for a piece of music one morning, so too past composers
– far more accomplished than I will ever be – encountered similar difficulties
when writing. Deifying past writers makes us forget that they encountered the
same challenges, emotions and thoughts that we do today. It makes us forget
that their music is a response to many of the issues and emotions that we face
too. It makes music seem irrelevant when it is anything but.

This means deification of the great composers won’t help
classical music engage new audiences. Linking composers to a higher power can’t
help but create an image of classical music as somehow lofty, distant and entirely
cerebral. Whilst classical music is undoubtedly an ‘intellectual’ art form as
well as a form of entertainment – works require repeated listening for a better
understanding of their material – we should be wary of shaping the genre into
some form of relic veneration, a cult or clique that worships at the altar of
those who achieved what we can only marvel at. By likening composers to gods,
and by neglecting the fact that even the greats could write bad music, we
neglect the very thing that makes this music so impressive, so beautiful, so
striking: the fact that it was written by humans.

We live in a world that frequently (and perhaps rightly)
dwells on the negative. The news shows conflict, poverty and injustice.
However, the world is also full of good. The world is full of musicians who
visit care homes, of orchestras who run workshops with the local community, of
instrumentalists who visit schools and inspire a love of music in others. The
great composers were no less human than any of these modern-day musical heroes.
In both past and present, composers have been trying to express important
truths, be they personal, emotional, political or global. But high intentions
and impressive masterpieces should not distract us from their humanity, the
fact that these composers were all human beings like us. Musical masterpieces
are a product of humanity; this is something we should be proud of. It is a
medal for humankind. Equally, by emphasising the humanity of past composers, we
remind new audiences that classical music is merely another form of expression,
much the same in intention and origin as great artworks, pop songs and
architecture. It is not intimidating. It is a real, human, living, breathing
form of expression. An expression of humanity.

Marvel at the “cathedrals of sound” – analyse them, relax to
them, read about them, talk about them - but do not forget that a human was
behind it. The fact that humans are the creators of music is what makes it so
special, so expressive. The human experience behind such music is surely what
makes it speak to us? Deifying past masters only serves to reduce this power of
their music by distancing the creators from our own lives, making them
increasingly irrelevant and archaic at a time when we need their life-giving
music more than ever.

Stravinsky would likely agree. He said that “the trouble
with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much
respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.” Music is
emotional, as well as cerebral, and so we should not reduce composers to mere
objects of intellectual worship. Music is mind and body.

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Words for, with and about music: novels, stage works, biographies, classical music journalism. Libretto for 'Silver Birch', Roxanna Panufnik's opera for Garsington 2017 ("powerful and poetic" - The Times). Latest novel 'Ghost Variations', based on the Schumann Violin Concerto's 1930s rediscovery. Performing narrated concerts based on it ("highly moving" - Birmingham Post). Now crowdfunding 'Meeting Odette', a 21st-century fairytale.
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20 March 2018, St John's Smith Square, 6.15pm: Pre-concert onstage interview with the brilliant young pianist George Li - curtain-raiser to his International Piano Series debut recital. Details and booking here

26 April 2018, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra: Pre-concert talk - Chopin and his Second Piano Concerto. 6.45pm. Concert is conducted by Matthias Pintscher, with David Kadouch as soloist, and the programme also includes extracts from Smetana's Ma Vlast and Dvorák's Symphony No.4. More info and booking here

1 August 2018, 5pm, Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Townsville, Far North Queensland: BEING MRS BACH Jessica presents the story of Anna Magdalena Bach in words and music - from the ecstasy of creation to the agonies of intense personal tragedy. She is joined onstage by a plethora of great festival artists including Roderick Williams (baritone), Siobhan Stagg (soprano), Guy Johnston (cello), the Goldner String Quartet and moreMore info